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Comment by dkoston | Hacker News Reader

Truth!

Names and Icons on AWS were made by people who don’t realize who helpful names and icons can be.

If it’s a database, use the cylinder icon that everyone knows is a database and then add some identifier to show which database it is.

If it’s DNS, don’t be too clever and name it Route 53. Name it Amazon Cloud DNS. Then anyone knows how to look for it in the console, web search for it, etc.

If you want something that the marketing folks can feel proud about wasting time on, add the silly name to the descriptive name: Amazon DNS Potato

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> If it’s DNS, don’t be too clever and name it Route 53. Name it Amazon Cloud DNS. Then anyone knows how to look for it in the console, web search for it, etc.

Please no. The unique AWS product names while occasionally inconvenient mean that you can at least find relevant information about them when searching, and you know that someone isn't confusing an AWS product with another platform or another style of deployment.

If you really don't like the AWS product names, then Azure is for you. Now go try to search for help with "Azure web apps" or "Azure sql database". Wade through the posts about locally deployed IIS, SQL server and the like.

I have no problem finding documentation for google cloud which has a similar naming scheme.

I don’t use a search engine though because they have made a good documentation site.

Adding a small identifier (as I suggested, even though jokingly) solves your problem as it’s easy to index:

Azure Cloud SQL Photon

That’s easy to understand it’s a Database and easy to search

What would be even easier to search is to use things that aren’t common words like:

Azure Cloud SQL R364T11

That’s hard to remember but likely narrows the search content drastically

And why "Amazon" EC2 but "AWS" Lambda? It throws me off every time I look at an alphabetically sorted list of the services. Granted, Microsoft slaps "Azure" in front of some of their services, but Amazon seems to optimise for having "AWS" and "Amazon" mentioned together as many times as possible, as if we need to be reminded.

`Amazon` named services are core building blocks (e.g. ec2 is just servers). `AWS` are services built on top of the `Amazon` services (e.g. Lambda runs on their EC2 machines, Batch runs on EC2 machines). usually

“Some exceptions may apply.”

i before e except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor

I don't believe that's the reasoning; and although I worked at AWS in the past I don't know for sure what's the reasoning behind choosing "Amazon" or "AWS" prefix for a service name.

For example, RDS is definitely a service built on top of other core services (EC2, S3, KMS, Route 53), its name is "Amazon RDS" and not "AWS RDS".

Glacier and Snowball were both the internal code names for the products pre-launch, and only ever intended to be such.

When things came close to launch, AWS Marketing decided to just roll with those code names. I've a suspicion that some teams deliberately used copyrighted names for their internal pre-launch project names, just to force the matter.

I've probably spent at least 3 hours collectively trying to find the DNS only to find/remember it is called Route 53. I rarely use it outside of initial setup and trying to recall the name of it each time is maddening.

But then they would have to take the marketing questions out of their associate level certification exams.

1. Which service would you use for DNS record creation?

A) Route 53

b) Amazon Cloud DNS

I joke, its an extremely low quality question regardless of the name. Some of the questions on the exam were pretty insightful, especially the ones that covered problems and what steps you would take to resolve them. Overall, the AWS associate level certification did feel like a giant marketing ploy, but my company wanted me to have it and paid for me to study and take it, so it was a nice relaxing break from the day-to-day.

It definitely has “Potato Quality” moments.

what about calling the database app "database"

There are multiple database apps, but yes they could have been a bit more generic.

There isn't just one database app. They have Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Neptune, RDS, and Redshift.

Case in point, Aurora is a type of database within RDS. RDS and Aurora are not separate database apps.

They list it as a separate product and they have slightly different logos. https://aws.amazon.com/products/databases/

"fast sql database," "fast nosql database," "redis cache nosql database," "graph database," "rds (is actually named right lol)," "big analytics SQL database."

As a longtime supporter of Remote Desktop Service in Windows, seeing AWS RDS took a while to get used to.

They could have named WorkSpace as Remote Desktop Service, which it is. Instead, many of my co-workers think AWS means only Amazon WorkSpace.

RDS doesn't scream DB at me.

Amazon Relational Database Amazon Keystore Amazon Warehouse Database Amazon Analytics Database

I agree these would be much more descriptive.

It could have been AuroraDB, DynamoDB, NeptuneDB, RDBS, and RedshiftDB. At least people would be able to tell that all of those are databases.

which database app?

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